The protagonist in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “Notes from Underground” feels like a narrated version of J. Alfred Prufrock from the T.S. Elliot poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock; and both characters have some light to shed on each other.
Prufrock is struggling to make himself fit into the intellectual crowd of his day, particularly the room where the beautiful and refined speak of Michelangelo, or rather they speak of art and beauty and the sublime. Prufrock wants to be considered one of these intellectuals, but is too concerned with what people will think of him to actually join the crowd. His nervous preoccupation with bald spots and clothing and thinning arms has sufficiently distracted him from achieving his societal goals. But the tragedy is not that failure, but the fact that he can look back and realize “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;” which is to say he has never lived his life. All his time has been spent catering to this crowd which he both aches to belong to and seemingly despises.
Dostoyevsky’s narrator is slightly different in his perception of himself. He thinks of himself as an intellectual already, and far superior to any other. But he spends his days fretting and ranting and deciding and undeciding . He wants desperately, more than anything, to have human companionship. But his gigantic preoccupation with status and appearance and what he supposes people really think when they see him ruins any social interaction he may have achieved through his supposed intellect.
When looking at the two characters together, there is the obvious comparison of vanity, where even the wording is uncannily similar, such as when Dostoyevsky’s character rants, “I’ve grown thinner! My clothes! Oh, damn my trousers,” while Prufrock stresses that others will say “But how his arms and legs are thin.” As well, they both are trying to impose themselves upon the upper class of society while they both remain in the lower class, at least so far as wealth and status is concerned. Prufrock realizes his imposition as he ascends the stair to the intellectuals, thinking “And indeed there will be time/To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and, ‘Do I dare?’/Time to turn back and descend the stair.” It is almost an involuntary, or at least uncontrollable, urge to ascend the stair, apparently against his better judgment or even desire. But Dostoyevsky’s character does the same, inviting himself to a dinner with friends who are not really friends, but who do belong to higher society. He even despises these people, while at the same time being completely unable to not go to dinner with them. After inviting himself he fumes, “’What possessed me, what possessed me to force myself upon them? … for a scoundrel, a pig like that Zverkov! Of course I had better not go.’ … But what made me furious was that I knew for certain that I should go, that I should make a point of going; and the more tactless, the more unseemly my going would be, the more certainly I would go.”
Having noted these similarities, it is time for the effect these characters have on each other, or rather on the reader’s interpretation of them.
Prufrock repeats often that there is time. He says there is time to ascend and descend the stair, drink coffee, revise, revise and contemplate indecision. But if we look at Dostoyevsky, we see that there isn’t time, and that too many “decisions and revisions” leads to drowning or, in the narrated version, twenty years of stewing over the stupid, uneducated world underground, having no place among any people, and filling the crave for social activity with venom and spite.
Prufrock allows the reader to see Dostoyevsky’s character for who he really is, not a self-proclaimed intellectual, but as a friend-starved, poor man, with nothing but his intellect to keep him even alive, much less happy and fulfilled. And Dostoyevsky’s character allows us to see the folly of Prufrock’s thinking, that preoccupation with appearance and trying to force your way into a class of society where you don’t belong, or rather where you don’t really want to be, will end your life eventually, making you into an outcast; not a society-mandated outcast, but a self-inflicted outcast. Both of these characters are who they are, and fail where they fail, because of their over-active minds and labels they impose upon themselves.
And as the title to Prufrock’s piece indicates, both he and Dostoyevsky’s narrator are seeking love, they simply don’t have the wits to see it, even when it smacks them in the face.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" Mark Haddon
The most intriguing aspect of this novel is that the narrator is autistic. He describes himself, as though from a third person point of view, in a calm, matter-of-fact manner. This means we get the story from an intelligent, fairly clear voice while the physical person is reserved and scared of the world, especially of being touched. He narrates to the reader how a police officer tried to grab him and in response he hit the officer and curled up on the ground, moaning and zoned out from the world. This presents the question of what goes on in the mind of a person society calls handicapped. In many ways he is more intelligent, rational and aware than what society might call a normal person.
"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" Ken Kesey
The narrator is a chronic, mentally ill patient in a mental institution. He is half Indian, Chief Bromden, and for the last ten years has pretended to be deaf and dumb. Because of that, people say things around him as though he isn't there, allowing him to know much about everyone and everything, and accurately tell the reader about the goings on at the institution. His main purpose is to tell the story of McMurphy, a new inmate who challenges all the rules and takes it upon himself to show the other inmates just how not crazy they all really are. The interesting dynamic is to have a narration in an intelligent, clear voice coming from an clinically insane, deaf and dumb Indian. Pushes the status quo of what crazy really means, and if it is possible to truly diagnose it.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Narration from the mentally ill, a comparison of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time"
Insanity is certainly a subjective term, especially when confronted with apparently insane/mentally ill narrators. Such is the case with Chief Bromden, the narrator in Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and Christopher, who tells the story in Mark Haddon’s “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time." Both narrators seem intuitive, ‘normal,’ and utterly competent even as they describe themselves as otherwise. And both narrators face tremendous obstacles that ultimately uncover hitherto hidden capabilities.
To start with let’s look at a few instances of these narrators describing themselves.
Bromden is an inmate at a mental institution. He is differentiating between the different classes of inmate, Acutes being the not so bad, short term, self-admitted inmates, and the chronics being pretty much there for life. Bromden further diversifies the categories when he says, “Chronics are in for good, the staff concedes. Chronics are divided into Walkers like me, can still get around if you keep them fed, and Wheelers and Vegetables.” (13) So Bromden isn’t an invalid, and he obviously has mental capacities that the nurses and doctors have no idea about. But this next statement seems a conundrum in light of the coherency of the narration. “I’m the one been here on the ward the longest, since the Second World War. I been here on the ward longer’n anybody.” (14) So there is a legitimate reason he is there, supposedly. And he has been pretending to be deaf and dumb for ten years. This means he could speak up, explain himself and get out of there. The fact that he doesn’t hints at a genuine mental problem, something that he needs to figure out, which I will discuss in a moment. But first let’s look at Christopher.
“My name is Christopher John Francis Boone. I know all the countries of the world and their capital cities and every prime number up to 7,057.” (2) This gives a picture of the obsessive intellect of the narrator. He knows much about certain things due to an impulsive need to know them, to connect them, such as connecting the countries and capitals of the world or the numbers in the universe. But more intriguing is his matter-of-fact narration of his own autistic actions. For example, at one point he is being checked into a police station, and the deputy tells him to take off his watch. Christopher writes “I said that I needed to keep my watch on because I needed to know exactly what time it was. And when they tried to take it off me I screamed, so they let me keep it on.” (13) In real time this scream would have been loud, a tantrum, and all would have seen him as a child, uncontrollable and inconsolable. But the way he tells it, it was just really important that he know the exact time.
Now the story becomes somewhat of a conflict for the reader. The calm voice of the narrator is not the boy being described in the story. We want the boy in the story to be able to do what is necessary to solve the mystery presented to him, and the narrator is rational enough to do that, but it’s as if the physical body is incapable. Both Christopher and Bromden have this mind/body disconnect, which is both frustrating and incredibly insightful, so far as answering the question of what really goes on in the mind of the mentally ill.
But each character is also faced with a problem that requires that disconnect to be bridged.
The obstacle in Cuckoo’s Nest is put into words when another inmate, Harding, is explaining to the new guy why the head nurse has so much power over the inmates, causing them to stay in the institution instead of trying the real world again: “Oh, you’re not paying attention, my friend. She doesn’t accuse. She merely needs to insinuate, insinuate anything, don’t you see? Didn’t you notice today? She’ll call a man to the door of the Nurses’ Station and stand there and ask him about a Kleenex found under his bed. No more, just ask. And he’ll feel like he’s lying to her, whatever answer he gives. I If he says he was cleaning a pen with it, she’ll say, ‘I see, a pen,’ or if he says he has a cold in his nose, she’ll say, ‘I see, a cold,’ and she’ll nod her neat little gray coiffure and smile her neat little smile and turn and go back into the Nurses’ Station, leave him standing there wondering just what did he use that Kleenex for.” (54)
She makes them believe about their own selves and capabilities what she wants them too, or at least keeps them guessing as to how competent and sane they really are. And the inmates haven’t figured a way around this. As Mr. Harding puts it, they all are “frightened, desperate, ineffectual little rabbit(s)” (53). Along with the rest of the inmates, Bromden has this mystery to solve before he can leave the ward. He has to figure out how to see himself as something other than an institutionalized rabbit, and think for himself what he wants to be, where he wants to go, and what his thoughts and desires and actions mean, according to his own interpretation. And based on the intentional longevity of his silent treatment, we know that those first words will be both highly significant and life changing.
Christopher’s larger problem is masked in the mystery of his neighbor’s murdered dog. After finding the murdered dog, Christopher is confronted by the owner, Mrs. Sheares. When Mrs. Shears starts screaming, Christopher writes. “I put my hands over my ears and closed my eye and rolled forward till I was hunched up with my forehead pressed onto the grass. The grass was wet and cold. It was nice.” (4)
Soon the police arrive. A Policeman begins questioning Christopher. He writes, “He was asking too many questions and he was asking them too quickly. They were stacking up in my head like loaves in the factory where Uncle Terry works … I rolled back onto the lawn and pressed my forehead to the ground again and made the noise that Father calls groaning. I make this noise when there is too much information coming into my head from the outside world. It is like when you are upset and you hold the radio against your ear and you tune it halfway between two stations so that all you get is white noise and then you turn the volume right up so that this is all you can hear and then you know you are safe because you cannot hear anything else. The policeman took hold of my arm and lifted me onto my feet. I didn’t like him touching me like this. And this is when I hit him.” (7)
Christopher feels a desperate need to solve the murder mystery, but the above passage describes an utter, physical incapability to do this. In the course of his investigation, he has to learn to project his desires into physical form, and must confront the mental issues that block control of his own body.
And in the end, Bromden and Christopher both push the limits of what they thought they were capable of, and come out feeling emboldened, accomplished, and ready to start life again, in light of what they have learned and done.
So what is the insight gained from a first person narrator who is the crazy one, as opposed to an omniscient narrator, or even limited third person? What you get is a question of what is crazy. When you hear the voice inside the head, you realize the rational, cool-headed intelligent voice is, perhaps, the real person behind the body, or the outward actions and eccentricities/craziness. At the same time you see the almost complete inability of them to make the outward self mirror the mind. It takes some sort of catalyst to give them the courage to start to consider projecting the mind out. For Bromden it takes a wild, unruly and ultimately saving new inmate to show him the path and give him the strength to break the bonds he has imposed on this body. For Christopher it is an epic journey to London, a trip that is born from fear and necessity, not want, and which is truly an impossible task to the body described in the first part of the book.
Because we’re in their heads, we understand what is at stake as they begin their transformations. We realize they are truly not who they seem on the outside, and we ask the question over and over again: What does it really mean to be mentally ill? At the same time the question arises: What does it really mean to call someone normal? And the answer comes out in both novels: Who knows.
To start with let’s look at a few instances of these narrators describing themselves.
Bromden is an inmate at a mental institution. He is differentiating between the different classes of inmate, Acutes being the not so bad, short term, self-admitted inmates, and the chronics being pretty much there for life. Bromden further diversifies the categories when he says, “Chronics are in for good, the staff concedes. Chronics are divided into Walkers like me, can still get around if you keep them fed, and Wheelers and Vegetables.” (13) So Bromden isn’t an invalid, and he obviously has mental capacities that the nurses and doctors have no idea about. But this next statement seems a conundrum in light of the coherency of the narration. “I’m the one been here on the ward the longest, since the Second World War. I been here on the ward longer’n anybody.” (14) So there is a legitimate reason he is there, supposedly. And he has been pretending to be deaf and dumb for ten years. This means he could speak up, explain himself and get out of there. The fact that he doesn’t hints at a genuine mental problem, something that he needs to figure out, which I will discuss in a moment. But first let’s look at Christopher.
“My name is Christopher John Francis Boone. I know all the countries of the world and their capital cities and every prime number up to 7,057.” (2) This gives a picture of the obsessive intellect of the narrator. He knows much about certain things due to an impulsive need to know them, to connect them, such as connecting the countries and capitals of the world or the numbers in the universe. But more intriguing is his matter-of-fact narration of his own autistic actions. For example, at one point he is being checked into a police station, and the deputy tells him to take off his watch. Christopher writes “I said that I needed to keep my watch on because I needed to know exactly what time it was. And when they tried to take it off me I screamed, so they let me keep it on.” (13) In real time this scream would have been loud, a tantrum, and all would have seen him as a child, uncontrollable and inconsolable. But the way he tells it, it was just really important that he know the exact time.
Now the story becomes somewhat of a conflict for the reader. The calm voice of the narrator is not the boy being described in the story. We want the boy in the story to be able to do what is necessary to solve the mystery presented to him, and the narrator is rational enough to do that, but it’s as if the physical body is incapable. Both Christopher and Bromden have this mind/body disconnect, which is both frustrating and incredibly insightful, so far as answering the question of what really goes on in the mind of the mentally ill.
But each character is also faced with a problem that requires that disconnect to be bridged.
The obstacle in Cuckoo’s Nest is put into words when another inmate, Harding, is explaining to the new guy why the head nurse has so much power over the inmates, causing them to stay in the institution instead of trying the real world again: “Oh, you’re not paying attention, my friend. She doesn’t accuse. She merely needs to insinuate, insinuate anything, don’t you see? Didn’t you notice today? She’ll call a man to the door of the Nurses’ Station and stand there and ask him about a Kleenex found under his bed. No more, just ask. And he’ll feel like he’s lying to her, whatever answer he gives. I If he says he was cleaning a pen with it, she’ll say, ‘I see, a pen,’ or if he says he has a cold in his nose, she’ll say, ‘I see, a cold,’ and she’ll nod her neat little gray coiffure and smile her neat little smile and turn and go back into the Nurses’ Station, leave him standing there wondering just what did he use that Kleenex for.” (54)
She makes them believe about their own selves and capabilities what she wants them too, or at least keeps them guessing as to how competent and sane they really are. And the inmates haven’t figured a way around this. As Mr. Harding puts it, they all are “frightened, desperate, ineffectual little rabbit(s)” (53). Along with the rest of the inmates, Bromden has this mystery to solve before he can leave the ward. He has to figure out how to see himself as something other than an institutionalized rabbit, and think for himself what he wants to be, where he wants to go, and what his thoughts and desires and actions mean, according to his own interpretation. And based on the intentional longevity of his silent treatment, we know that those first words will be both highly significant and life changing.
Christopher’s larger problem is masked in the mystery of his neighbor’s murdered dog. After finding the murdered dog, Christopher is confronted by the owner, Mrs. Sheares. When Mrs. Shears starts screaming, Christopher writes. “I put my hands over my ears and closed my eye and rolled forward till I was hunched up with my forehead pressed onto the grass. The grass was wet and cold. It was nice.” (4)
Soon the police arrive. A Policeman begins questioning Christopher. He writes, “He was asking too many questions and he was asking them too quickly. They were stacking up in my head like loaves in the factory where Uncle Terry works … I rolled back onto the lawn and pressed my forehead to the ground again and made the noise that Father calls groaning. I make this noise when there is too much information coming into my head from the outside world. It is like when you are upset and you hold the radio against your ear and you tune it halfway between two stations so that all you get is white noise and then you turn the volume right up so that this is all you can hear and then you know you are safe because you cannot hear anything else. The policeman took hold of my arm and lifted me onto my feet. I didn’t like him touching me like this. And this is when I hit him.” (7)
Christopher feels a desperate need to solve the murder mystery, but the above passage describes an utter, physical incapability to do this. In the course of his investigation, he has to learn to project his desires into physical form, and must confront the mental issues that block control of his own body.
And in the end, Bromden and Christopher both push the limits of what they thought they were capable of, and come out feeling emboldened, accomplished, and ready to start life again, in light of what they have learned and done.
So what is the insight gained from a first person narrator who is the crazy one, as opposed to an omniscient narrator, or even limited third person? What you get is a question of what is crazy. When you hear the voice inside the head, you realize the rational, cool-headed intelligent voice is, perhaps, the real person behind the body, or the outward actions and eccentricities/craziness. At the same time you see the almost complete inability of them to make the outward self mirror the mind. It takes some sort of catalyst to give them the courage to start to consider projecting the mind out. For Bromden it takes a wild, unruly and ultimately saving new inmate to show him the path and give him the strength to break the bonds he has imposed on this body. For Christopher it is an epic journey to London, a trip that is born from fear and necessity, not want, and which is truly an impossible task to the body described in the first part of the book.
Because we’re in their heads, we understand what is at stake as they begin their transformations. We realize they are truly not who they seem on the outside, and we ask the question over and over again: What does it really mean to be mentally ill? At the same time the question arises: What does it really mean to call someone normal? And the answer comes out in both novels: Who knows.
Friday, July 31, 2009
"A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You" by Amy Bloom
Amy Bloom’s story “A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You” involves a mother, Jane, dealing with her daughter deciding to become a man. Jane is the protagonist, with Jessie (eventually Jess) her antagonist. Jane’s character is as realistic and likeable and empathetic from page one until the end, and part of what makes her so is her attitude towards her daughter/son. On page two she is at the park with 5-year-old Jessie, pondering how much she has in common with her daughter and what a fantastic pair they make.
“Jane didn’t mention all this to the other mothers at play group, who would have said it was the same between them and their daughters when Jane could see it was not … Jane’s reputation as the play group’s good listener was undeserved; the mothers talked about their knock-kneed girls and backward boys and Jane smiled and her eyes followed Jessie. She watched her and thought, That smile! Those lashes! How brave! How determined!” (2)
Even though Jane has just admitted that every parent thinks the same way as her about their children, only she has a child warranting such unabashed praise. That makes Jane a good mom, or at least the cool mom that all the other kids get jealous of. She’s the mom Jessie’s boyfriends will have a crush on and who her girlfriends will want to be like.
Yet, though Amy Bloom is sparing in her depiction of struggle in Jane’s life, they are there at the pivotal moment during which the story takes place. Jessie is getting ready for surgery to officially become Jess.
Jane seems and is supportive of Jess’s choice, and only from a reference earlier on page six do we suspect this may be hard for her.
“It did not seem possible that the great joke God would play on her was to take the love of her life, a wonderfully improved piece of Jane, and say, Oops. Looks like a girl but it’s a boy! Sorry. Adjust accordingly. It took Jane all of Jessie’s childhood to figure out what the adjustment might be and to save fifty thousand dollars to pay for it.” (6).
But the struggle of figuring out what to do is trumped by the struggle of how to maintain the beautiful, perfect relationship she had with Jessie with Jess. And her insecurities about how this is accomplished sneak their way into the story. At the gender-reassignment clinic, one mom comments to Jane about the conundrum of women with breast cancer trying everything they can to keep their breasts, while the girls at this clinic are trying to lop them off. Jane replies
“Well, for them, it’s like their breasts are tumors. For them, I just don’t think their breasts ever feel to them the way ours do to us.’ She thinks, And that would be how you can tell that they’re transsexual, Sheila. Sheila looks at Jane sideways, pursing her lips as if to say, Well, aren’t you understanding? Aren’t you just Transsexual Mom of the Year?” (9).
But we are reading from Jane’s point of view. Anything Sheila’s pursed lips were supposedly saying is only what Jane is supposing them to say. Just like at the playground, Jane is looking around at other parents and making herself to be far superior. And in many ways she really is. The relationship she had with her daughter is rare, and fighting to make gender-reassignment surgery not a big deal is only natural so she can maintain her ‘awesome mother’ role with Jess. But she is trying so hard to be accepting that she fails to take stock of what she really thinks, what is really happening, and especially what she really wants.
The separation between the two, though hardly beyond repairing, and which will absolutely be repaired, begins to show as the surgery approaches. They go sunbathing and “Just two years ago, they lay naked in their backyard, sunblock on their nipples and white asses, reading and drinking club soda. Now they turn away from each other to strip down to their underwear.” (16). Jane recalls an earlier time, thinking “When she hoped that Jessie might just be a lesbian …” (17). That ‘hoped’ also skews the readers’ perception of Jane’s complete understanding of what’s going on.
But the struggle evolves not with Jessie becoming Jess, but with Jane exploring her own sexuality. Jane sees Jess as sure of himself, decisive, knowing what he wants. Jane visits Northampton, Massachusetts, the ‘Lesbian Paradise’ by herself. She once took Jessie there to explore the lesbian world, but it obviously didn’t take with Jessie. Bloom writes that Jane visits Northampton every couple of years, long after Jess’s surgery. That also means long after the end of this story, which means whatever conclusion is made about Jane has to factor that fact in. And it isn’t ironic that on the same page we learn that as Jane is approached by a man;
“Jane has goosebumps and her chest hurts, and it has been so long since she’s had these symptoms that for a moment she thinks she’s getting the flu.” (20).
As a burgeoning relationship takes form, Jane struggles to figure out if he’s gay or straight, even as she appears to be falling for him nonetheless.
When Cole is not gay and expresses a sexual interest in Jane, there is a fragile, unfamiliar quality to Jane’s demeanor that hasn’t yet been expressed. It is as though she has finally stopped trying so hard to please, and is displaying plainly exactly what she wants: A man.
And though her man, Cole, offers mostly wild, conflicting emotions and sexual frustration and insecurity all within the first few days of knowing her, Jane accepts him into her life. She returns from the hospital where there is now only Jess, and allows Cole to hope. Jane also decides to trust in hope.
“Jane didn’t mention all this to the other mothers at play group, who would have said it was the same between them and their daughters when Jane could see it was not … Jane’s reputation as the play group’s good listener was undeserved; the mothers talked about their knock-kneed girls and backward boys and Jane smiled and her eyes followed Jessie. She watched her and thought, That smile! Those lashes! How brave! How determined!” (2)
Even though Jane has just admitted that every parent thinks the same way as her about their children, only she has a child warranting such unabashed praise. That makes Jane a good mom, or at least the cool mom that all the other kids get jealous of. She’s the mom Jessie’s boyfriends will have a crush on and who her girlfriends will want to be like.
Yet, though Amy Bloom is sparing in her depiction of struggle in Jane’s life, they are there at the pivotal moment during which the story takes place. Jessie is getting ready for surgery to officially become Jess.
Jane seems and is supportive of Jess’s choice, and only from a reference earlier on page six do we suspect this may be hard for her.
“It did not seem possible that the great joke God would play on her was to take the love of her life, a wonderfully improved piece of Jane, and say, Oops. Looks like a girl but it’s a boy! Sorry. Adjust accordingly. It took Jane all of Jessie’s childhood to figure out what the adjustment might be and to save fifty thousand dollars to pay for it.” (6).
But the struggle of figuring out what to do is trumped by the struggle of how to maintain the beautiful, perfect relationship she had with Jessie with Jess. And her insecurities about how this is accomplished sneak their way into the story. At the gender-reassignment clinic, one mom comments to Jane about the conundrum of women with breast cancer trying everything they can to keep their breasts, while the girls at this clinic are trying to lop them off. Jane replies
“Well, for them, it’s like their breasts are tumors. For them, I just don’t think their breasts ever feel to them the way ours do to us.’ She thinks, And that would be how you can tell that they’re transsexual, Sheila. Sheila looks at Jane sideways, pursing her lips as if to say, Well, aren’t you understanding? Aren’t you just Transsexual Mom of the Year?” (9).
But we are reading from Jane’s point of view. Anything Sheila’s pursed lips were supposedly saying is only what Jane is supposing them to say. Just like at the playground, Jane is looking around at other parents and making herself to be far superior. And in many ways she really is. The relationship she had with her daughter is rare, and fighting to make gender-reassignment surgery not a big deal is only natural so she can maintain her ‘awesome mother’ role with Jess. But she is trying so hard to be accepting that she fails to take stock of what she really thinks, what is really happening, and especially what she really wants.
The separation between the two, though hardly beyond repairing, and which will absolutely be repaired, begins to show as the surgery approaches. They go sunbathing and “Just two years ago, they lay naked in their backyard, sunblock on their nipples and white asses, reading and drinking club soda. Now they turn away from each other to strip down to their underwear.” (16). Jane recalls an earlier time, thinking “When she hoped that Jessie might just be a lesbian …” (17). That ‘hoped’ also skews the readers’ perception of Jane’s complete understanding of what’s going on.
But the struggle evolves not with Jessie becoming Jess, but with Jane exploring her own sexuality. Jane sees Jess as sure of himself, decisive, knowing what he wants. Jane visits Northampton, Massachusetts, the ‘Lesbian Paradise’ by herself. She once took Jessie there to explore the lesbian world, but it obviously didn’t take with Jessie. Bloom writes that Jane visits Northampton every couple of years, long after Jess’s surgery. That also means long after the end of this story, which means whatever conclusion is made about Jane has to factor that fact in. And it isn’t ironic that on the same page we learn that as Jane is approached by a man;
“Jane has goosebumps and her chest hurts, and it has been so long since she’s had these symptoms that for a moment she thinks she’s getting the flu.” (20).
As a burgeoning relationship takes form, Jane struggles to figure out if he’s gay or straight, even as she appears to be falling for him nonetheless.
When Cole is not gay and expresses a sexual interest in Jane, there is a fragile, unfamiliar quality to Jane’s demeanor that hasn’t yet been expressed. It is as though she has finally stopped trying so hard to please, and is displaying plainly exactly what she wants: A man.
And though her man, Cole, offers mostly wild, conflicting emotions and sexual frustration and insecurity all within the first few days of knowing her, Jane accepts him into her life. She returns from the hospital where there is now only Jess, and allows Cole to hope. Jane also decides to trust in hope.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
James Joyce "The Dead:" Why the title
James Joyce twisted the way I might otherwise read “The Dead” because of the title. From page one I am looking for the significance of death or dying in this seemingly simple story of an annual dinner party. And it isn’t until page 27 of this 50-page book that death in any form is even mentioned.
The topic comes about when the conversation at the dinner party turns to the monks in Mount Melleray. The monks are described as never speaking, waking at two in the morning, and they sleep in coffins. Now coffin is a pretty obvious allusion to death in and of itself, but Joyce doesn’t just throw it in haphazardly. In titling the book “The Dead,” Joyce has attuned our senses to the topic, and when coffins are mentioned, the clocks start turning and analytical thinking becomes hyper sensitive.
The coffin talk continues for less than half a page, but after the party guests have discussed the oddity of the coffin bed, the question is posed as to why the monks sleep in them.
The coffin, said Mary Jane, is to remind them of their last end. (27)
Now the connection between coffins and death has been made, and there is an awkwardness at the table. It isn’t spoken of again, and instead Joyce writes.
As the subject had grown lugubrious it was buried in a silence of the table during which Mrs Malins could be heard saying to her neighbor in an indistinct undertone:
-They are very good men, the monks, very pious men.(27)
That ends the monk talk, but the damage has been done. These people are hesitant, even fearful of talking about death. The dead hold some mystery that they won’t comprehend. It’s not that they are unable to uncover the dead, it’s that for some reason they worry what they will find. They therefore keep their conversation very light and on the surface of things in the present, never delving into serious topics (such as religion, which seems also to be a shady subject).
But this aversion to death described via the monks makes the realization Gabriel comes to at the end that much more poignant. Gabriel, the protagonist, sees his wife moved to tears by a song sung at the party. This excites him for he thinks it may have unlocked some long forgotten feelings of playfulness and carelessness. He anticipates a reversion to their younger years, and he anticipates sex.
Her change, however, is more melancholy than Gabrielle had imagined. Her mood involves the death of a teenage love; a young boy who sang the same song which was sung at the party, who braved inclement weather while very ill just to see Gabriel’s wife one last time. The boy died as a result. And through much turmoil, Gabriel’s jealousy and anger die down and he contemplates the profound effect this boy had on his wife.
So she had had that romance in her life: a man had died for her sake. It hardly pained him now to think how poor a part he, her husband, had played in her life. (48)
The realization comes that those who aren’t talking about the dead are those fearing the impact they will make when they die. But a small impact in death is a result of a small impact in life.
Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. And realizing what his wife had with the young boy Generous tears filled Gabriel’s eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman but he knew that such a feeling must be love. (49)
The dead had more impact on his wife than the living. And even earlier in the story there is talk of a long forgotten opera singer who has passed on. He is described as having the most pure tenor voice ever. This memory has more impact on the party guests who remember him than any living opera. The dead, apparently, evoke the kind of emotions that make life worth living.
As a side note to this story, the lack of quotation marks offers a seamless quality to the work. There are no pauses, and the writing flows into and out of Gabrielle’s mind freely and easily. Joyce also leaves out periods after prefixes: Mrs, Mr, etc. This has the same effect. There is nothing to halt the reader, but words flow on to other words.
The topic comes about when the conversation at the dinner party turns to the monks in Mount Melleray. The monks are described as never speaking, waking at two in the morning, and they sleep in coffins. Now coffin is a pretty obvious allusion to death in and of itself, but Joyce doesn’t just throw it in haphazardly. In titling the book “The Dead,” Joyce has attuned our senses to the topic, and when coffins are mentioned, the clocks start turning and analytical thinking becomes hyper sensitive.
The coffin talk continues for less than half a page, but after the party guests have discussed the oddity of the coffin bed, the question is posed as to why the monks sleep in them.
The coffin, said Mary Jane, is to remind them of their last end. (27)
Now the connection between coffins and death has been made, and there is an awkwardness at the table. It isn’t spoken of again, and instead Joyce writes.
As the subject had grown lugubrious it was buried in a silence of the table during which Mrs Malins could be heard saying to her neighbor in an indistinct undertone:
-They are very good men, the monks, very pious men.(27)
That ends the monk talk, but the damage has been done. These people are hesitant, even fearful of talking about death. The dead hold some mystery that they won’t comprehend. It’s not that they are unable to uncover the dead, it’s that for some reason they worry what they will find. They therefore keep their conversation very light and on the surface of things in the present, never delving into serious topics (such as religion, which seems also to be a shady subject).
But this aversion to death described via the monks makes the realization Gabriel comes to at the end that much more poignant. Gabriel, the protagonist, sees his wife moved to tears by a song sung at the party. This excites him for he thinks it may have unlocked some long forgotten feelings of playfulness and carelessness. He anticipates a reversion to their younger years, and he anticipates sex.
Her change, however, is more melancholy than Gabrielle had imagined. Her mood involves the death of a teenage love; a young boy who sang the same song which was sung at the party, who braved inclement weather while very ill just to see Gabriel’s wife one last time. The boy died as a result. And through much turmoil, Gabriel’s jealousy and anger die down and he contemplates the profound effect this boy had on his wife.
So she had had that romance in her life: a man had died for her sake. It hardly pained him now to think how poor a part he, her husband, had played in her life. (48)
The realization comes that those who aren’t talking about the dead are those fearing the impact they will make when they die. But a small impact in death is a result of a small impact in life.
Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. And realizing what his wife had with the young boy Generous tears filled Gabriel’s eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman but he knew that such a feeling must be love. (49)
The dead had more impact on his wife than the living. And even earlier in the story there is talk of a long forgotten opera singer who has passed on. He is described as having the most pure tenor voice ever. This memory has more impact on the party guests who remember him than any living opera. The dead, apparently, evoke the kind of emotions that make life worth living.
As a side note to this story, the lack of quotation marks offers a seamless quality to the work. There are no pauses, and the writing flows into and out of Gabrielle’s mind freely and easily. Joyce also leaves out periods after prefixes: Mrs, Mr, etc. This has the same effect. There is nothing to halt the reader, but words flow on to other words.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
My design
Here is a link to some of my news-page designs. I have posted just a few, but will update it periodically: npd.snd.org/profile/TonyPotter.
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